[luau] News - UK police test Linux desktops

[Warren Togami]

http://www.vnunet.com/News/1135986
Part of the trial involves migrating existing police applications to Linux
and making use of open source software.

West Yorkshire Police has 3,500 desktops and estimates a possible saving of
£1m per annum on full rollout.

Paul Friday, head of IS for West Yorkshite Police, said the installation had
been smooth, and that the only problems they had encountered were with some
legacy systems, which had been anticipated."

"The benefit is not just in cutting licence costs. The real win is increased
security. No writable drive means no security vulnerability. So we can put
the desktops into one-stop shops, prisons and other places. It only works
with an ID card. So what if get stolen. At £299 who cares."

The operatin system is Red Hat Linux version 8 to which a smart card-based
log-in has been added by Netproject. The hardware comes from GCI, a
Taiwanese company, while the smart card technology is from Gemplus.

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